robotson.com

2008 comic book movies

2008-08-19T12:53:00.001-07:00

iron man and dark knight are both top notch films, although iron man more so just as a comic book movie, and the new batman film trancends to the level of gritty crime drama.

i think that the success of both of these films speaks to the collective need for society to see mortal men who can do extraordinary things, note that the new batman is set in a dark fairly realistic world - further confirming my earlier contention that batman begins, the successful reboot of the batman franchise, reflects a more serious, post 9-11 world in which our heros can no longer afford to be campy and silly, here we see directors addressing issues of crime and terror, combating evil and the lengths that we have to go thru in order to do so. america's comic book heroes are perceived by other societies as reflections or icons of america, superman and uncle sam and batman and lady liberty all sitting side by side. stark and wayne both successful superwealthy elites with ties to the defense industry - these movies are fantasies of american military might. and here we can collectively imagine our power and our strength and perceive our role in the world as good and just, but this is not enough for audiences raised on the language of hollywood blockbusters and now we demand complex anti-heroes with faults and doubts like our own, a one dimensionally good savior without flaws seems paperthin to us now, not a good reflection of our own place in the world as american identity.

iron man in particular tackles the current climate of islamic radicalism - and yet here the good guys and the bad guys are not so cut and dry. the twist here is that it is not merely those who would rise up in arms against the west - but those who would supply arms to both sides of the conflict. war profiteers and their corruption are the true enemy behind the thin shell of our biases and superficial readings of world events. unfortunately we are burdened by the start of a franchise here - we have to introduce iron man and his formation and thus in the beginning we are waiting for iron man to make his appearance, and the whole movie sort of becomes a trailer for successive releases in which we can dispense with the origins and get into the real hero drama. iron man leaves us with a battle resolved, a battle that merely introduces us to what ironman is capable of doing.

the dark knight sees a fully formed batman hit the screen, picking up with batman begins' ending question, "what about escalation?" delving strait into the joker when in the last movie we were left with his calling card. batman is past the daddy issues and psychology of where he comes from, now we get into the dilemma of where he must proceed.

heath ledger supposedly locked himself in a room for a month, keeping a diary of the jokers thoughts, while he worked out the mannerisms and mentality of his character and found his own voice to rival jack nicholson's performance. ledger's turn has garnered talk of an oscar, with some critics believing such merit would be earned regardless of his unfortunate passing. i would love to see him awarded as such - and i believe this movie lives up to the hype and serves the cause of legitimizing an artform, the comic book, seriously enough to raise the bar of what the comic book movie can be, certainly redeeming the franchise that "batman and robin" drove into the ground with its toy store promotional feel and campy scenarios and dialog.

there are a lot of gangster movies lately where police corruption is such a big part of the drama- the entire justice system is portrayed as being corrupt, in need of good people to infiltrate what has already been compromised so much that those who stand on the side of the law are in the minority and must fear for their lives because of their idealism. these are serious themes, and the questions that the audience encounters in them are valid ones to be asking in these uncertain times. and the new batman movie moves into similar terrain, following the setup of the previous movie's dark reading of how far society has sunk.

these are smart movies. the joker's usage of the prisoner's dilemma, and the question of what happens when the irresistible force enacts upon the immovable object, these are philosophical constructs and remind me of how "the matrix" wrapped up relatively advanced notions in the pop formula of action movie.

the dark knight plays on our paranoia of surveillance, cell phones being monitored like the national security agency. here our worst fears of civil liberties eroding are allegorically addressed in the guise of the batman, with some right wing commentators reading the movie as a justification of the current administrations actions. i think the movie doesn't so squarely cast bush as batman so much as american power as batman, and doesn't let bush off the hook so much as questions the abuse of that power. questions of, "does the public need to know the truth?" are asked not to apologize for our own government's lies, but to give batman the kind of depth that reflects the complexity of our own society. batman is on the side of good, and so should america be, and yet even an elected official like dent can be corrupted by the anarchy of a politik of fear - of giving in to our worst impulses. batman stands against that policy and appeals to our need to strive for the greater good, even when society is divided as to what that good is.

i also enjoyed the new hulk movie, although this is more forgetable than the others. ang lee's earlier version was enjoyable for me as well, although the pop psychology of bruce banner's formation and father figure issues left most of the audience for the earlier film wanting for more of a straight forward plot. i think rightly the studios reboot the hulk with a more basic formula, dealing more directly with questions of weaponizing biological terrors, and the whole notion of "what has science done" and the classic "we've created a monster" themes. american might again, and power is explored in terms of falling into the wrong hands, the good man with power is the underdog, he doesn't even want the power that he has and this is why he is the good man. the bad man desires the power to destroy for its own sake, the good man is burdened by destructive power and uses it only to protect virtue.

i also enjoyed speed racer. i think its a great kids movie and its nice to see the wachowski brothers produce a PG rated movie. speed racer and the racer family represent classic family values and "the little guy" standing up to corporate might. craftsmanship and hard work over selling out are valued here, american ingenuity is celebrated over transnational domination.

indian jones was also great, playing to the new age mentality of precolumbian mysticism, 2012 and so forth. the political climate is addressed with communism and mccarthyism standing in for terrorism and the patriot act. indy's patriotism is questioned by government powers, and we know to trust our hero more than our government. indy has a family and good family values are confirmed, this is an intergenerational indiana jones that the parents who grew up with can share with their own families. my father and i share this view.

all of these leading heroes speak to our need to innovate as americans, they are ingenious men who are not gods, but men of will who are capable of great things because of their intelligence and their desire to do what is right. this is the kind of hero that dwells in each of us and i think the directors making these movies are addressing the needs of the public by celebrating these values.

this is a decent summary of my thoughts on these films.
what do you think?

robotson

graphic design notes

2008-08-19T01:12:00.000-07:00

sharpies and white out pens for thumbnails
working fast and loose
don't be too meticulous
carry a sketchbook
jeopardy theme
don't show 'em color
know when to walk away
index cards and cocktail napkins

never an arms length from something to draw on or with.
cheap blocks of small notepads.
hypergraphics.
grease pen in the shower
all you can remember is that you had a good idea -
scribble notes and pictures
don't draw while you're driving
turn in things in a folder.
everything you turn in has gotta look professional.
photoshop book.
non designers design book.
critiques are incredibly important.

do the work.
turn in everything.
not sloppy or careless looking.
even the real primadonas still do the work.
attendances.
email or message by phone.
that's professionalism.
this is a business based on deadlines.

eternal love revolution

2008-06-08T23:14:00.001-07:00

Here is a chat transcript of a conversation i had with my friend mark maccora, a film maker who lives in los angeles. mark has been a good friend to me in my travels for years - in my first trip out to LA when i was more of a hardcore poetry bum, in 2003 - i didn't know anyone out there and i spent my first week there sleeping under a pier - he was the first guy i met who really connected to me and what i was doing, he was also the first person to offer me a place to crash, although it didn't work out because his roommates at the time were a little skeptical about him taking in an unwashed stranger. however, we've remained friends for the last 5 years and i've taken every chance i can get to spend the time to visit him.

mark is soon to be going out on a 40 day road trip in which he travels across america with a video camera, recording interviews with people about their views on american spirituality. i wish him great success in his various projects, which he refers to under the banner of a title he calls "the eternal love revolution."

Sunday, June 8, 2008

11:34
mark maccora: How you rockin?

11:35
Lance Robotson: alright
things are pretty good
i got to be in a native american church meeting in a tipi.

11:36
mark maccora: Dude! I should be there taping that!
When are you doing that?

11:37
Lance Robotson
its done already
anyway you can't you know, record that kind of thing

11:37
mark maccora: Oh, I'm sure.

11:37
Lance Robotson: you have to find someone who would first let you observe, that would be a big deal in the first place
then to get permission to record parts of it, that would be huge
anyway i had a good experience

11:38
mark maccora: The lodge I did was one of the most intense experiences of my life!
Any epiphanies?

11:39
Lance Robotson: its not about necessarily having epiphanic moments or anything, its about being in a community of supportive people in times of joy and times of need
it made me feel real humble
like a tiny pathetic creature
and uhh.. i think we forget that sort of reverence for existence a lot
we get caught up in the memory of ourselves

11:40
mark maccora: Yeah, duder. Ego.

11:40
Lance Robotson: word

11:40
mark maccora: Humility can be an epiphany.

11:41
Lance Robotson: yeah i guess it can.

11:41
mark maccora: Especially if it puts us into a more reasonable relationship with the rest of existence.

11:41
Lance Robotson: it makes me feel like
you know i want to express what i feel for people more
like if you have a good feeling for someone you should tell them you know
because you never know if you'll be able to tell them again
or what a good word will do for someone else
and it makes me think about how difficult life could be, how fortunate i am to have the kind of people in my life that i do

11:45
mark maccora: Word.

11:45
Lance Robotson: feel that way about you too, mark.
real glad to know you.

11:45
mark maccora: I love that. I love that you say that. I love you, Lance.

11:45
Lance Robotson: yeah i love you too man.

11:45
mark maccora: Thank you.

11:46
Lance Robotson: you know i'm in the world looking for a community you know and i want to be able to consider you part of mine
even though we can't always be in the same place

11:46
mark maccora: I'm all about assembling a community, or tribe if you will.

11:46
Lance Robotson: collectivity.

11:47
mark maccora: Even though I hate humanity's classic tribalistic nature.

11:47
Lance Robotson: i'm interested in distributed collectivity enhanced by mediated communication technology
but another thing i've been thinking about a lot is how

11:48
mark maccora: Yes?

11:48
Lance Robotson: we have to sort of develop new traditions and new rituals for a new world where people have no relationship to their past
i mean, if you already have traditions to draw on to make you stronger than thats great and more power to ya
but i think a lot of people don't know where they come from or what it means to be a human in the universe

11:50
mark maccora: I agree. That's why we need to explore our (humanity's) traditions, and allow them to be shared and included in a world culture.
Especially a world spiritual culture.

11:50
Lance Robotson: so i'm really interested in the notion of sort of creating theatrical performances that include group participation and keyframe moments of ritual for an audience to experience

11:50
mark maccora: That's cool!

11:50
Lance Robotson: not to sell people on some new bandwagon
or to get them to buy into my new religion or something
thats not my concern
its more to give people an experience that maybe exposes them to something that they might have been lacking
and maybe open that realm up for them so that they could explore it in themselves more.

11:51
mark maccora: Something they didn't know they lacked, but that they feel they lack.

11:51
Lance Robotson: yeah.
thats a good point
so you're right about exploring human tradition
because i think to be effective in staging something like what i'm talking about
you know
a lot of research would be good
to kind of develop an understanding
of what different people have done and still do
you know, what kinds of instruments are employed, what kind of protocols and procedures
and maybe you see the common threads
and you can draw on inspiration from different ways
not to bastardize or take something away from other people but to access the universal

11:54
mark maccora: An open exchange of the human spiritual condition.

11:54
Lance Robotson: i hope so.

11:55
mark maccora
That's what my work is about.
That's what I want the Eternal Love Revolution to be...

11:55
Lance Robotson: yeah i love that..
i want to be down, some how.

11:55
mark maccora: You are down!
You are a part of it already!

11:55
Lance Robotson: fundamentalism is dangerous
but i think that the kind of new age wholesale cultural imperialism appropriation of indiginous practices is dangerous too.

11:56
mark maccora: Yes, it's not about haphazard re-appropriation, it's about respectful inclusion.

11:56
Lance Robotson: yeah it's a hard line to walk though, with that one
because so many traditions consider themselves sacrosanct and self contained, in which their leaders say, "don't mix ways"
and so forth
thats why i'm looking for the motions, the performance aspects
sort of like an inverted cargo cult

11:58
mark maccora: ?

11:58
Lance Robotson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
appearing in tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically-advanced, non-native cultures—which focus upon obtaining the material wealth of the advanced culture through magical thinking as well as religious rituals and practices—while believing that the materials were intended for them by their deities
Cargo cults thus focus on efforts to overcome what they perceive as the undue influence of the others attracting the goods, by conducting rituals imitating behavior they have observed among the holders of the desired wealth, and presuming that their deities and ancestors will, at last, recognize their own people and send the cargo to them instead. Thus a characteristic feature of cargo cults is the belief that spiritual agents will at some future time give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members

11:59
mark maccora: I am just reading that paragraph.

11:59
Lance Robotson: Famous examples of cargo cult activity include the setting up of mock airstrips, airports, offices, dining rooms, as well as the fetishization and attempted construction of western goods, such as radios made of coconuts and straw. Believers may stage "drills" and "marches" with sticks for rifles and use military-style insignia and "USA" painted on their bodies to make them look like soldiers, thereby treating the activities of western military personnel as rituals to be performed for the purpose of attracting the cargo. The cult members built these items and 'facilities' in the belief that the structures would attract cargo intended to be sent to them.

Monday, June 9, 2008

12:00
Lance Robotson: thats magical thinking- sort of like an inverted kind of science, where causation works in reverse, the effecting the symbol effects a change in reality
whereas what i'm saying is that we're like the technological society who sees the isolated society and desires their spiritual wealth, and so in a sense we must create a reverse cargo cult, and use our rational methodology to emulate their practices to create a magical experience

12:02
mark maccora: Ha ha!
LOL!

12:03
Lance Robotson: the irony?

12:03
mark maccora
Yes,
but also such sadness!

12:03
Lance Robotson: yeah.
its come to this.

12:03
mark maccora: How we sacrifice out connection with the ethereal in existence for technological progress,
which is essentially adopting relationships with our creations,
instead of embracing the rest of existence.

12:04
Lance Robotson: more and more so even still
and so on.
but uhh...
in a sense you know, our connection to the ethereal has always been sort of tenuous
the further and further we have abstracted from our animal nature.
and we've always employed symbols to sort of realign us with that nature
its just that the noise ratio now is so much higher
there is such an excess production of meanings
so in a sense i think that its a perfectly natural step forward, adapting traditions for the new world we encounter. every generation has to do it.
and the more that that world becomes interconnected within itself our cultural responsibilities grow greater.

12:11
mark maccora: Once we each accept responsibility for the total mass of human experience we can fuse culture with respect and reverence.
But back to technology, I have to go do some laundry.

12:11
Lance Robotson: mmhmm.
good to rap with you a bit mark - you make me want to formulate my ideas in a good way, it suprises myself
give me a lot to think about.

12:13
mark maccora: Well, I'm going to save this and possibly include it in the doc, so thank you.
We shall talk again soon.

12:14 mark maccora disconnected

text of new york poetry part 2

2007-10-23T16:59:00.000-07:00

my brother would say - "i'm so
self ref." residential. instrumental
irreplaceable don't look at nobody until
you get out of the teleportation
device - return to nowhere where
i go when there's nowhere to
go - you know what i'm saying we
stopped the proceedings there's shows
in the park it just goes to show
that there's one thing worth doing
which is talking to people to make
up a new distribution of power
collective wisdom i know nothing
special i just gotta let you know
art i choke life i strangle not
willing to settle for any thing
really so you keep moving on

---

i'm rusted incomplete lack of
practice so i hit the books
with action scribbling hooks
for traction just to get back
into good working order -
you should be reporting on
conditions of the common
mission with a strong urge
to listen - comparatively i pare
down my gear to next to
nothing so i can function sitting
in public with a pen in my
hand chewing on caps
explosive reaction components
collapsing - a fire storm
retired for fueling entire
hoards of uninspired orcs
like carl orff down to the iron core

--

keep 'em waiting for insight
darling of the day without
canvassing - amassing a way
with a following - saying what's
on your chest - feeling feeble
and restless - over arching acceptance
of conditions corresponding to
the wishes of apologists - don't
give me no lip service or
condolences i ain't dead yet
i'm just staying still for the
art of it honored to be
a part of this honest
opinion generating system of
open idea sharing contributions
donated freely without
expectation.

--

i'm panhandling for opinions
a free marketplace of ideas
so what's the difference you
spare change of mental states
and tell me your theories
the frameworks for viewing
the world and your place in it
what you know about love and
friendship - your daily struggle
is commendable i'll recommend
you for promotion if you know
which way you're going - me, i'm
on the road perpetually hoping
to gain a foot in the door to
rent space in your brain - so
whats left, a place to stay
and the means to keep moving
never a dull day

--

thieves and whores now in
stores
miss representin'
please loiter here
and sell poetry here
people are so afraid
to even just acknowledge
each other
reality is pretty
realistic but it isn't
really real
so sit next to me
it's awesome
so let it all blossom.
i'll play fast friends
and find my ready-made
family forever

--

tomorrow is today
i swear to you
i don't say goodbye i say
see ya later
all is one hidden in
each little bit on and
off more than you can
chew.
the song called teach
me how to play
regardless of everything
you knew
so don't preach
man's grasp can barely meet
its reach
beyond reproach appalling
in it for the long hauling

--

defying description
definition definitive
mystery militant misery
symmetry see me try
see me do with a screw
loose see me lose my cool
against a carpenter's wishes
circumstances dictate that
i can't get rid of these
hiccups and downswing
-ing moods will turn around
any minute now minute
differences make the majority
of the character in comparison
calling a monster a martyr
is easier than adopting a
policy of promising what you
can do - attitude growling

--

imaginary city founding
trouble counting blessings
blanking out each reminder
across the plain over
the course of the day
you should ask him to stay
and be ready for the
burden of separation when
it's coming cause you
know we just can't stay
here forever when the
wind is blowing get a
sweater sneaking over
the turnstile left to
wonder what would have
happened if everything
working out how you wanted

--

spare some skins or swipe me
unlikely i get where i'm going
in slow motion too much force
is wasted effort be gentle
your will is enough without
violence i hear those thoughts
speaking a loft dreaming
a roof sleeping abandoned
building squatting silly
saw blades sauntering
toothless cross eyed cobble
stoned star fish rebellion
in cool breeze on a chill
night in your breast a
hold of me earlier you
should have gotten teach
me the syntax dorothy

--

no blank states untarnished
with money on your back
burner 'cause we as people
value other things and are
more concerned with having
meetings that'll never end
and returning to the source
of all creation breathing
deeply exhaling galaxies
gravitating toward common
sense epiphanies and
everyday victories amongst
country bumpkins turned
radical nomadic heroes -
must find the others
unite the tribes and
realize the undiscovered

--

texts of poetry from new york, part one

2007-10-19T16:54:00.000-07:00

another one attracted
to the road side of life
slice of time righteous lime
twist of faith sketchy
in vanity same tragedy
games glamourous glimmering
shine shimmering twine
withering wise weeping
willowy wisps billowing
blathering buskering fits
brain dumping spelling bee
especially noxious compelling
repulsive ridiculous mission
accomplished with no accomplice
accosted corrosive battering
random access memory
enhancement

---

look across the river
with a telescope it's no joke
lottery ticket play a prank
saying grace giving thanks
for a bitter cynicism you can
be in love with. cinnamon
sticks shredded on french
toast and pancakes in the
morning retreat get away
practice just to make perfect
contribution noting observation
on a mystical quest saying
nothing helping you move in
notch in your bed post another
hole in your belt losing weight
on the road good thing i
hibernated so long

---

coming out of incubation
chambers killing your soul
setting the pace with relief
of a snowflake stained black
by the tar after your journey
write a book about sunday
rest a while too long make
a point to respond searching
outward turning in to see
a rich illumination of the
boredom so ordinary complaint of
the world depression is
seeking the wrong dream
desensitized to what's
really wanted the soul
yearning for freedom a
joint operation conflicting

---

command mistaken control
released contortion capable
sleeping uncomfortable distorted
reflection a fun house
result. spooking the neighbors
helping a friend. make
no bones about it self directed
approach to those problems and
making your lists better call up
your family just to settle your
worries in historic disaster
of malicious negligence as
opposed to graceful benevolent
elegance keeping composure let's
get serious here on the ghost
train seeing no end present
continuous tense unbroken

---

tie up your hands can you
free up your plans would it
kill you to dance don't you
know you could land if you
jump in the air there's a
pump over there so fill up
your flat tire and make
rubber hit road under
radar get low wearing scuba
sink slow burning laser heat
glow hearing sonar beep
blown out the watery cove
you just never know neither
do i, i know too many
words i have lust in my
heart you should gouge out
my eyes when i stare on the
train

---

your speed poetry and fix
it consumerism don't need
my blessing - i'm a bum with
no standing so i just do my
thing - there's no use in the
after we should just make it
so - i go solo i stoop to the
level of the stairs that you
settle i'm a colonist i colonize
your colony after the fact is
absorbed there's not much left
to do with the meter of dogs
in the oven a heater of homes
no regrets to rejoice over
doing your own thing to complete
only hopes only dreams only notes
take a message - i will build
the master sheets.

---

some thoughts on the task of living artfully

2007-10-06T02:49:00.000-07:00

i've been thinking a lot about how to go about with the general task of being a good person and an artist in the world, and trying to foster some kind of net positive change in the long run. i've traveled around the us now for some years, talking to people of all sorts that i could run across, mostly bums and bohemians to be sure, but still trying to take it all in, and come up with some sort of median perspective that these people can share. i'm interested in what unites us. the things we need as human organisms that are central and basic. i'm thinking about creating spaces - people need spaces to meet and do things, to talk and dream together and plan, and what i've witnessed across the board is a wholesale scaling back of public space, with greater restrictions on what you can and cannot do there. there is an implied threat, that you cannot violate the city's idea of what a public space is for, backed up by an armed guard. i group this phenomena with a larger trend that i like to refer to as "the war on difference."

think about it. you have all these streets, all these sidewalks, and squares, leading to homes and shops, jobs and venues of entertainment. but that mall just can't float in space. it needs the public places to be valuable. all the businesses need all of that space in which travel from here to there is designated, but it would seem that more and more, travel is all those spaces can be utilized for. meanwhile parks have signs that prohibit rallies and gatherings without permits. well, what if a bunch of free individuals want to get together in a public place, and sit down and have a big picnic and give away food to bums, and not disturb anyone? how could you stop them from doing that? well you probably run into health codes, and ordinances of where you can sit and for what reasons, and if there's any central leadership or some kind of organization promoting it you've got someone to come down on it. all you can do is be moving from point a to point b. if you can just sit down, and take in all the people running around, maybe watch a guy do a magic trick, or listen to some folk musician play his guts out, or witness any kind of public spectacle that is a demonstration of free expression, you are essentially threatening the surrounding businesses, the movie theaters who would have entranced you for a couple hours at 10 bucks a pop. the shoe store that you could have lost yourself browsing through. the restaurants who would prefer you to not just buy some fruit and sit down and eat with your friends on a bench. all of these interests have some kind of sway on the city government who makes the rules about what you can do where, and if you're not contributing to the local economy you're taking away from it. the police will enforce these rules like they have nothing better to do. nevermind the cultural value of people doing these things, enriching peoples' lives, that doesn't have an economic metric to calculate and therefore doesn't really exist.

i have some ideas. i want to create tiny happenings, a movement of small scale spectacles that are simple enough to intuitively understand, at a size that the common passerby can participate in. i want to focus on things like food and water, and expression and entertainment, things that grab people on a visceral level that transcends aesthetic and culture and gets down to humanity at its core, the social animal. gatherings for anyone. flash mobs and art pranks, surreal and practical, all the same. a potluck in the park, initiated over myspace messages and sms txt's and email and hand bill flyers. a giant cardboard box fort on the campus. a "peanuts" style free psychology booth. a mass masturbation march on the white house. anything that people can get behind without arguing over causes - causes have divided us. i want to be fun, and spontaneous. i want to smile and compliment a stranger who looks sullen. i want to leave every person that i meet a little more motivated than before, and of course i want to be a bit more motivated by them as well. i view each transaction in society as a challenge - an opportunity to rise to the occasion of being an authentic human being. i think we owe it to ourselves and our future as a species. will you go out into your day with your head down, complying with the routine motions of your predefined spaces that you inhabit? walking into the super market, not upsetting anyone, filing in line to the check out point - all possibilities narrowed down to a predictable range - no better than a piece of some grand machine that only services you in an incidental manner? or will you demand more from your experience of humanity and society, and ask for just a little more each day out of your necessary interactions with the rest of the world? i hope that you encounter a place some day, that will encourage something like the latter to stir within you, and that you will have the audacity to scream, or speak your mind, or debate and question, or fall in love. i hope you take that trip to an unknown place. when you feel like you've arrived, you'll be in good company. there are more authentic living breathing free people in the world than we might give credit. good luck.

new york city

2007-09-15T12:05:00.001-07:00

i've survived upstate NY, the trip down to the big city thru the country and stops at waterfalls along the massachusetts new york border. road trips with photographer friends, euro-tourists, french film artist woman and panamanian rasta mystic. we sit on rocks, stare at the water pouring down, smoke tobacco. i spit sunflower seed shells onto the rocky dirt banks of stream.

i survive weeks in new york city, to open mikes, up to queens, down to bay ridge brooklyn, in basements of diner cafe owners playing music thru amplifiers and drum kits, over to the east village for bars at night, downtown, uptown, always back to union square. sitting on "Buy Art Today" suitcase, photographers taking pictures of my beatnik posture, strangers, travelers, coming to talk to me. "what kind of art do you do?"

"i do poetry. poetry is art too."

"oh, i thought you did something visual. you know, like a painter or something."

yes.

make new friends from different places, possible leads to go visit in the future. new friends in texas, florida, south carolina. the trip is working. the goal of putting yourself out there with intention on making new connections to sustain the never ending road trip across america, to gain the perspective necessary to become a true american poet. what right do you have to speak of this land, do you know her terrain and the heart of her people? are you qualified to open your mouth? to pick up a pen?

the money i make flows thru me quickly. five dollars here, there. it all goes back to the metro transit authority. 2 dollar subway ride into town. 2 dollar ride back to crash pad. save another two dollars for the trip out tomorrow. i go out to the union square in mahattan, spending my last dollars on the faith that if i hang out today i will meet some new people, i will sell some more poetry books, i will be taken care of. i will make new friends, who may be broke but who may share their food with me later.

we eat in groups, clustered around fruit bowls lifted from whole foods across the street, eat cups of yogurt, humus and falafel from a pita place, soup and candy, sharing with street friends and passers by. we sit and talk about where we're from, what we're doing. what new york used to be. in the nineties before guilliani anmd heroin chic, how the squaters in tompkins square would have their whole scene, before police in tanks and calvery horses would decend on them with batons, to strike away the filth and dirt that scared away developers and yuppies. everything we're doing now is like the last embers of that fire that once glowed bright and excited the artists, the war on artists has got us cornered now. washington square, union square. here we are, sitting around. what to do now?

i survived the trip to pittsburgh, a friend called, "can you come down?" she bought me a ticket. i told her "why not tonight?" and that was that, hours later i was on the bus, for the 10 hour greyhound stretch, legs cramped, talking to poor people. gotta move with these opportunities when they develop. if someone offered me a trip out of town now, i would take it, in a heart beat. pittsburgh conservative and unfriendly. nice to look at, but the culture antagonistic and fratty. football fans glare at queers and bohemians. if you grew up here different, woe to you. happenings restricted to one or two organic coffee shops. a couple weeks in town, some efforts to make new friends. hang out on college campuses, sneak into a talent show for freshman in orientation week, perform poetry, they love me, want me to show off for the incoming class. too bad i don't actually go to school here (also would be more impressive if i was actually only 18 years old). stay in town a few days later just to do one open mic, the owner of the shop supports what i'm doing, purchases a book. then off to the 1:30 am bus ride, express bus, only one stop for a meal break, makes NYC in 7 and a half hours. then i am back in town, text messaging all my friends at once, "lance robotson back in NYC!"

stop to visit friends, drop off bags. fresh in to town with 100 copies of my booklet. courtesy of an old friend in pittsburgh, who i used to work with in minneapolis some years ago, a friend who helped me out before as well in california, we've met up multiple times now in different cities, him with his office supply store job and me with my suitcase of poetry. now back to NYC to get rid of all this weight.

go to open mics to perform, hopefully girls will like me on the merit of my word. be intruiged by my story. meet college kids who have to sign me in at the security desk at their dorms, if the guard is uptight he won't accept my expired ID. i just turned 25 last month, quarter of a century, need to renew my credentials. the doormen at bars in this city don't care, but the security rent-a-cops wield their power excessively.

hang out with poet girls, compare notes, styles, forms and content. take long train rides sharing the same unlimited metrocard, have to wait 12 to 18 minutes to use it again at the same train station, as the machines poll the central server once every 6 minutes, so depending on when you catch it you must wait for 3 cycles of 6 minutes to use the card twice. this is to prevent missuse. we don't care, we're broke, and it's worth our time to be together.

it's starting to get colder. i must make preperations to leave soon. i want to go to atlanta. i have to email people there to see what's what. i have 70 books left in my estimation.

sometimes i go out late at night, to go on dates, with girls who i don't want to ask right away if i can stay the night with them, and then by the time they tell me that they can't have me overnight, i discover that it's rather late to be calling any of my friends, so i stay up all night and sleep in a park in the day instead. don't want to sleep outside at night, that's sketchy. instead i'll talk to bums and drunks and read novels until day break, and open my umbrella on the green of the park, when it's legal to lay there, and sit underneath my portable shade and rest my body and eyes, and mind sometimes too, for a few hours. waking up refreshed, surrounded by studying students and workers on lunch breaks, eying me like i am alien, foriegn to them, waking up in the park, in 4 days unwashed clothing. me loving life. them prisoner to the world. who is the one who is unlucky?

sooner or later the tension has to break. after a long night of snuggling in stairs and stoops with a cute girl who must sleep alone, after following young women into bars and showing english majors my work, after drinks and food they buy me because they dig what i'm doing, i make my way to the long 11 hour delusional stretch of granduer that comes from sleep deprivation and the over the counter dissassociation of a long night in a city that won't let you rest. and then the poetry bums, one young neophyte like me, and a 61 year old man, sit in tompkins square smoking cigarettes together talking about the history and the poetry and the beats and the kings of the streets in the past, while the monk of hare krishna circles around his trees saying his morning chants, and we discuss his religion and the religion of others, and how strange it all is, and i buy him tea, and he makes me a drawing, and we go on our seperate ways. and i travel back to washington square and spend my last dollar on 4 bananas and walk up to the young man displaying his paintings, working with brushes on a new canvass, and i say, "do you want a banana?" and he says, "sure! good food, good brain food.." like my grandfather used to say. and i say, "i've been seeing you out here for a while now man, how's it going? i do poetry myself..." and he says maybe you want to set up your wares here with me? so i sit with him, and listen to him complain about the life of a street vending painter, and share with him the life of a street vending poet. i say, "new york ain't really new york anymore man..." and he says, "i know."

"what are we going to do about it?" i ask him.

and he replies: "i think we have to start a movement."

in my grand delusion: a large rally of poets and musicians and painters and artists, taking to the streets to have the party of the century, in these sensitive times after nine-eleven anniversary, and we bang on buckets and water bottles and sing and scream poetry and keep the spirit alive, for this new time of the war on artists, the war on difference, the war on spirit and the war on human. these times are vicious, and i think the only thing left to do is to celebrate what we have left, each other.

poetry update 2007-09-09 16:38:44

2007-09-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

Gabcast! new robotson mobile phone booth journal #10

it's the pitts (and the secret)

2007-08-24T14:08:00.000-07:00

so i've been on the road since leaving albuquerque now for what must be, getting close to 2 months. this trip could go on forever. right now i am typing this in pittsburgh, staying in a friend's house, watching celebrity reality tv shows on demand on cable, the downfall of man in his stupidity and convenience and technological distractions, i saw a guy riding the bus the other day with an iphone, probably sold his car to get one, who knows. pittsburgh is the pitts, but the people i know are the good sort, or at least the sort i like, creative, compulsion to create really so they dedicate their lives to it really, and take it seriously, and seriously pursue venues and outlets to make their creative productivity really work for them in some way.

"you go to design college

i go to Art's Universe-
it teased me!
too complex
it teased me
move into a simple sit
eased me."

simplicity in the simple city: a steel town, andrew carnegie not dale carnegie. we watched the secret and i watched the oprah episodes about it taped on the personal digital video recorder built into the cable box and made arguments about how this spiritual quick fixer-uperism is futile and perverse, and even looked up criticisms of the secret from various sources and that talk about it in a phone conversation interview with douglas rushkoff... but hey, if it works for you, isn't that what it's all about? or what spirituality is all about? sure, but hey, i don't need a life coach motivational wonk to sell me my inspiration jack, that's just not my style, and you know, spiritual con-man-ism has always appealed to me (it's really what my whole bent is all about) but maybe i'm just jealous of these metaphysical bookstore visionaries and gurus who get paid to be crazy, while i'm out here hawking poetry books on street corners. some call it street entrepreneurialism and i'm down with that terminology. regardless of all this one thing i feel is that we shouldn't need a new specialized language to speak of important intimate concerns in our existences, in our human relationships, and our connections to nature or what have you, we should be able to find a common ground in the words of our time, it should be intuitive to the young, and sensible to a wise elder even. the kids these days, and the moon-speak addled wacko consciousness fringe, are really irritating my rationalist cynical personality. i hate new age quackery, even maybe more than i am not into your organized religions, or basically any systems that promote an end to questioning things and purport to give you answers that you can hold on to, i don't buy into any of that, i take bits and pieces as i need them to get the job done, sure, but i don't go in for having a lot of fluffly cotton candy beliefs pervading my psyche cluttering up my vision. as few beliefs as possible to function optimally, that's what i say, like your beliefs are the code that makes up a program and you want it to be powerful but lightweight, efficient, elegant. it's like having stuff. i don't want to have too much stuff in my travel kit so ideally when you have to replace something you should be able to replace it with something new that is lighter, more multipurpose than the old thing, maybe you have to get one new thing, but you can replace two old things with it. until you just keep trimming down your gear to its optimum condition, suited for your purposes. its like that with your system of belief too, i should think, i mean, i do think. thats one belief i have that let me get rid of a lot of others.

i feel that the moment that you stop asking questions, you start dying. i had a strange relationship once, a long time ago sort of, when there was a bad trip, and much anxiety and longing questions looking into nothingness and it was stated to me that maybe somethings aren't meant to be looked into, if they are unknowable it's like wasted effort, and if life is love and existence is benevolent then shouldn't we concentrate on just loving better? and sure, we SHOULD concentrate on loving, as humans in a social world, and as living beings in a natural world, but i tend to think life is absurd and meaningless, because it's less comfortable that way and i like it. and to dwell on it all, at least for a little while, everyday, maybe keeps you fit in a sort of way. or at least it's funny, hilarious, black humor pointing to the stress of an uncertain existence. unnerving really. it's just that some of us find that funny and in some ways, exciting, that anything can happen, that you don't know the outcome. believing that you don't know, can't know, what will happen after you die is a thousand times more exciting to me than believing that i'll go to heaven or that my consciousness will live on in reincarnation or what have you. it's not that i'm saying i'd rather not know, because i think about you know, what happens to consciousness, all the time, it's not that i'm arguing that ignorance is better, i'm just saying there's an arrogance is presuming to know one way or the other, and also why believe something that you cannot know is true? unless it serves your purposes. but for my purposes i think not knowing is the most exciting thing of all. because anything is possible.

new robotson mobile phone booth journal #9

2007-08-16T18:42:00.001-07:00

Gabcast! new robotson mobile phone booth journal #9

new robotson mobile phone booth journal #8

2007-08-10T17:23:00.001-07:00

Gabcast! new robotson mobile phone booth journal #8

the car alarm story

2007-08-03T16:22:00.000-07:00

so we were up in cape vince, me and darius at a friend's bar, right? and there's this french festival going on that weekend, fireworks going off, and people wandering the streets, drinking, right? and we're outside of this bar, catching up with each other since we'd last seen each other some couple hours earlier, when all of the sudden a car parked on the street starts squealing beeping piercing your ears, buzzing alarming alerting everyone, on the street, standing outside the bar smoking, walking down the street. and i say, "oh just great, you know, whenever i here one of those things it makes me want to steal that car."

and dar says, "you should."

but i don't really have the nerve. i just think it's funny to say that the alarm actually has its opposite from intended effect. so what the hell, the alarm is still going on now for what seems like a long time, a too long time, like longer than most people's car alarms that you hear, i dunno, maybe you've heard some pretty long ones in your life but the point is that this one is going on for a long time now, and it's just as annoying as any other car alarm you've ever heard. maybe more.

so when the alarm finally shuts off, i shout out a long "woooo!" sound, drawing it out for a long time (almost imitating some kind of alarm noise) the way that i would at a good performance, like something that really rocks, right? and spontaneously everyone starts cheering and clapping, in celebration that the car alarm had stopped sounding.

i turned to darius and said, "have you ever seen that before?"
and he says, "no. no, i don't think so."

friday the thirteenth

2007-07-24T15:27:00.001-07:00

cape vincent, friday the thirteenth.

we pulled in to town later than expected, darius and i, in his van, finding the streets blocked off in the little town for the french festival the next day. we arrived to meet up with our friend jacob, who had been living out there over the summer, doing colonial house restoration and building rifles from the revolutionary war era. his friend tony owns some businesses in town, and we're to meet jacob at a bar, where darius has promised me that we'll be well taken care of. pulling in around 11 or so, darius is trying to regain his bearings in the little town, with the streets blocked off. but it's a little town, without a lot of ways to go around, so we find our way into a parking lot behind a bar, i'm not sure where we're supposed to go, i'm just following, don't know if we gotta walk all the way down these streets or anything. but no, we're right next to the place, and step inside, looking around for our friend. he's sitting by the door, we miss him and walk right by. here he is grinning at us, and i'm the first to notice him. he stands up and embraces me, pats me on the back and shakes my hand, and darius too.

the three of us have been on the road together before, running around new york, to baltimore, and generally just all over the area, a few years ago, the first time i came in to NYC. and we're going to do it again, go down to the city in a couple days. just a short trip, not too long, darius wants to get back up to potsdam, and i'm sort of just along for the ride.

jacob is introducing us to the bartender women, and all the pretty girls - he seems to know all the pretty girls darius is saying to me, and we go outside, and he introduces us to the menfolk as well, and they all seem to be in with him too. he is well liked. he introduces us to tony who owns the bar, and tony makes us feel at home, gets us big cups of beer, and people are standing around outside of the bar, smoking cigarettes drinking their beers, and it's like new orleans or something, you can walk around with your beer, must be the only town in new york state. don't know if it's just for this festival this weekend or what.

jacob explains to me that the festival, called "french festival" or something, happens every year, and is actually in reference to the feact that napoleon bonaparte was once going to move out to this town, cape vincent, and that his brother was already out there, that's why napoleon was going to come. so every year they have a parade and marching bands, and all these people come across the ferry over the st lawrence from kingston and elsewhere from canada and come down to cape vincent and hang out for the weekend. and get wasted too, i guess.

we spend the night drinking, and BSing, and having a generally merry time, until it's late, and we go back to jacob's parents house, with a few extra beers, and i spend the night on a fold out bed, after eating some bread and meat, and cheese.

---

saturday, july 14th

we wake up late, like 2 in the afternoon, i was having weird dreams about zombies and airplanes, and darius was feeling under the weather. we'd missed the morning parade, missed the opportunity to take pictures of the parade, thats what darius does, taking pictures with his big telephoto lens all the time, but we went out back to the bar/restaurant anyway, to soak up the scene and witness the strangeness. lots of people milling about, marching bands and bagpipes guys everywhere, vendors on the sides of streets. i was concerned with trying to write journals about the days before in potsdam, so i spent some time doing that in the day, and hiding outside of a cafe that jacob had worked on restoring, he'd hand painted the welcome sign in a calligraphy style with no guides, all free hand, and everyone was amazed they said, well the cafe was selling stuff thru the front door but they had it blocked off with a table so you couldn't go in, so i hid in the bar, and sat on a stool, banging the keys trying to get caught up with our trip. darius was feeling ill and laid down in some grass. jacob and i talked to tony about it, said perhaps we should get some food in us, and tony put in some orders for us at his restaurant, very kind. we ate a free lunch, and afterwards dar started to feel better and he went around taking some pictures. jacob went to find an ATM and one of the only ones in town was totally out of cash. the other one had mysteriously stopped working. so tony did a cash back charge for him on the card machine in the bar.

i walked around and took some pictures of funny signs, and looked at strange north country people. a drum line group of sailors in training for her royal majesty's service paraded, beating their instruments. then bag pipers, and steel drummers, and more, and finally all the bag pipers collided together, marching around, and everyone close in around them to listen to amazing grace and so forth. the announcer, over the loudspeaker feedbacking bagpipe noise, closed the ceremonies and many of those marching band peoples went home for the night.

the rest of us went to the bar, and i helped tony and some other guys do things like, relocate a portipotty, and wall off the smoking/21+ section for the outside of the bar, with orange plastic roll up fencing. there was supposed to be a band playing on a trailer set up outside, but the rain had started to pick up and scared everyone in. the band van showed up and started hauling their equipment in. a pressurized keg beer stand truck was opened up, and manned by tony's cousins. i stood around with dar and jacob and we watched the people filter in and out, small town, having a good time.

i made the most half hearted attempts to talk to women. they were all married or whatever. i talked to a couple, a woman in a pirate shirt (with a gold tooth painted on the front) and her husband, an army guy who flew helicopters, and used to manage a space camp for kids, they were nice. she worked for tony at one of his businesses and was talking about how she didn't understand where he had the energy, watching him fly around dealing with situations as they developed, setting up his outside bar. i told them about how i was a traveling poet. they called me on it, and asked me to prove it. so i read them something, a piece i wrote a while ago on an airplane, from san francisco to minneapolis. they were impressed, and she bought a book of poems off of me to demonstrate it. told me about how they were from the south, how i should go be a starving artist down there, the rent is cheaper. told me about a native girl in tennessee that they knew who was really beautiful, trying to hook me up. go find her, you'll love her they said. we were all hiding under the awning, from the rain, and i was kicking myself that i'd forgotten my umbrella, lost somewhere back in jill's house in potsdam.

i thought about jill too, back in potsdam, and how she was setting up her art table next to the cross walk sign, across the street from the theater, during the potsdam city's little summer festival. and how me and darius, bouncing from small upstate new york town to another, taking in these tiny festivals. i should do this all the time, i though. there's a captive market of people walking around.

some dorky kids, in cool clothes, future hipsters, all ready too cool for their small town, were wandering around asking drunks to sign this inflatable animal that they had, pool toy, duck of some sort if i remember. "sign my duck!" the one in the guns and roses jacket was saying. they were cute kids, young teens, and i told them that they were the future and that they were awesome. some drunks, were bothered by them, offended by their obnoxiousness. misunderstood youth of nowhereville, rising up to cause trouble, wholesome really. giving me hope.

it was getting dark and the bar party, despite being rained on, was in full swing. rumor mongers came around, telling everyone the fireworks were canceled from rain. terrible loss, tragedy. but then the rain broke for a while. and booming starts happening. everyone runs around the corner to check it out. i'm thinking, "yeah they might as well detonate all those gunpowder monstrosities that they have because they spent probably a lot of money on them" and some guy is echoing my thoughts, talking about how that money could have been better spent on building wind farms, wind power is a big debate around here right now. we're watching the fireworks, and i'm chanting "USA!" again, like was at the fireworks we just saw in potsdam.

darius and i are getting hungry again and tony smuggles us some old pizza from one of his shops. dar and i eat graciously, and hide in the shadow,s watching the street action. a giant 300 pound man, pushes over a portapotty in the park across the street. and later some police come by and wake up a drunk guy passed out on some business's front steps. dar and i talk to nice girls, who invite us to come with them tomorrow on a big boat, and he's really into the idea even though i'm pretty sure we won't have time for it since we're leaving for new york. but the attention from nice women is gratifying, until some crazy guy walks up and starts scaring them away. he engages us all in friendly banter, asks about our deals and stuff. i tell him i'm a traveling poet, he asks me if i like kerouac. i say, you know, of course i do, and he says to me that he is "BETTER THAN KEROUAC" because he's a musician and he just got back from florida, syphoning gas out of people's tanks the whole way. we talk for awhile and i look for some polite way to extract myself from the conversation, after the women take off.

i have lots of conversations with different people, over plastic cups of beer, and walk back and forth to cars to partake of private smoking sessions. meet traveling landscaping hippies, and small town musicians who promise to rain hellfire down on your city, and fratty guys who are pretty chill and just like to have a good time. darius, sober from feeling sick all day and not drinking, is capable of driving us out of the town for the evening, after the bar is closing, and the girls working are kicking everyone out, and i'm staring at the girl in the bright red coat, and all of the most beautiful women are married to the friends of our friends of friends, and we're feeling like its time to leave.

i'm trying to goad the guys into hitting the road for the big city tonight, even though it's almost 3, but dar is smart and he's saying, no way, we'll sleep get some rest, eat some food, talk with jacob's father for a while, he's really interesting, you'll like him... i can't argue with these guys. so we're back at jacobs house again, with a few beers, in the basement, have a cig or two, soak up some stories from jacob about his doings. hit the bed again, out like a light but the sun is coming up.

****************

sunday the 15th

the guys get up earlier than me, i get a shower in, and repack my stuff. they go out to pick up dar's car, which we left out in town, and came home in jacob's little two door sports thing. we're going to drive to new york in this tiny car, and dar will save money on gas, and leave his van up at jacob's parents house.

i'm stealing wireless from the neighbors, and looking at some videos that just got posted onto youtube, from this festival i went to in may, that i hosted a stage at for a few hours, and also did poetry. i'm never on the official booking of the show but they let me come and perform, and i end up in the promotional videos. it's called telemagica, out in the desert outside of san diego. i'm sorting thru the different videos looking for myself, narcissist. looking at the videos, and condensing down the two bags i brought to just one backpack, don't need that much stuff, for a short stay in NYC.

darius and i talk for a while with jacob's father, who is sitting on his porch, telling us stories about the revolutionary war and the architecture of the buildings we're spying on, thru a telescope, across the river. he's got these rifles that take months to make, hand carving them, staining them with home made linseed oil. real interesting guy. loves history. revolutionary war, probably his favorite war. he talks about indians, and canada, and lots of great things, that i wish i would have wrote about 9 days ago when this all actually happened. but now my memory is hazy, so i'm giving you the abbreviated version.

so hey, we have great talks with the dad, and we get all packed up, and i'm crushed in this back seat of this tiny car, with my backpack between my legs, trunk is smashed, a big imac box with computer inside of it right next to my left. and we're flying, hitting the road again. i haven't had phone service all weekend, roaming. jacob says he pays for his phone bill and can't even use it in this town. rents a place in manhattan but lives up here, got a bank account up here because there's better perks, changed his car insurance to out here to get out of city taxes. the living is slower up here, but cheaper, and the terrain is gorgeous. and i'm saying, "lets come back to french fest every year!" we can do it right after potsdam days or whatever it's called.

once we're out of town i get service again, we're listening to old country songs on the radio. i send in a new txt message to my webpage, updating my location as "headed to NYC from cape vincent, ny...."

still alive

2007-07-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

just a quick note to let you know that i'm still alive. i'm in the process of whipping up some new journals of all the stuff that went down in the past 10 days. been falling behind, hard. no good. we've gone left potsdam, gone to new york, and come back already. so here i am. will post some more stuff soon!

oh yeah, a friend of mine from albuquerque just sent me this great thing, a transcript of a conversation we had that she taped a long time ago, some months. i thought i'd post it here for you to read, because i think it's kind of funny.

here's the note that i got from her, with the transcript, i blocked out all the names though, to protect the wicked.

*******************

Howdy friend.....
I transcribed our conversation from when we were sitting on my kitchen at 3:30 a.m. by the fridge. The few people who've read it said it was the greatest conversation ever.

Here's our conversation:

Me: I said that you must be one of the A.D.D. angels cause you were talking about how your mind was reeling from the defeat us (da fetus) thing, and how it works on so many levels and how your brain was attacking it from these different angles so it made me think about how when you’re being A.D.D. or whatever and they try to sit you down in the classroom and draw stuff on this chalkboard and you have to sit there and look at it and you don’t want to just sit there and look at it. You wanna get up and get around it and get on top of it and stuff and like look at it from these different angles. And you would actually learn better in a different environment. So it’s just like, that you’re not actually deficient or something, you’re just, like…

Her: …too efficient for the first dimension.

Me: You’re, like, really good at doing something, but you’re just in the wrong environment.

Her: And then you said...

Me: And then I said 'oh, I’m getting sentimental because there’s honey at the bottom of my coffee.'

Her: You said weepy and sentimental.

Me: Did I?

Her: Yes

Me: No I didn’t, you made that up

Her: I did not! That’s why I laughed… I remember thinking of a weeping willow tree.

Me: I’m getting all weepy and sentimental because there’s honey at the bottom of my coffee.

Her: And so how does that make you weepy and sentimental?

Me: It doesn’t. It’s just like when I was hanging out with A. earlier and like I was saying I hope that M. isn’t all sauced when she shows up here in her car to come pick me up because I was complicit to her drunk driving or whatever. And he’s like ‘Oh, man, that’s really not good.” And I was like ‘Well, whatever, that’s why I’m wearing this tie.” And then I was like, which actually doesn’t have anything to do with anything, and he was like “Oh, I was just thinking, how does that help?” you know. It just sounds like funny to just be like because there’s honey at the bottom of my coffee.

Her: Right, right, right, right, right. And sometimes instead ofr saying because you can say so and that sounds good. You can say I was getting all weepy and sentimental, so there was honey at the bottom of my cup. Like you change the reason into this sub or post-reason. Does this make any sense?

Me: Maybe. That sounds good. Let’s try that sometimes

Her: Let’s try it all o’ the time.

Me: Let’s always be trying.

Her: Trying is just unexerted effort.

Me: Yeah, you keep saying that, what’s that from? Is that in your motivation that you’re writing or whatever? That’s the title of the book. It’s called “Trying is Unexerted Effort!”

Her: The best way to grow from a self-help book is to write your own self-help book, because everyone fucking knows what to do. You know like to helpo yourself lose weight and not be an obese fat rad…

Me: …like me

Her: Yeah, like us. You do certain things. You don’t have to read about.

Me: You know about the old cliché about writing self help books is that if you’re really successful at it you wouldn’t be able to write a sequel. But in fact that’s not true, because if you are successful at it you could turn it into a whole franchise. But, so, it kind of defies logic actually. It’s kind of a conundrum.

Her: (Laughing hysterically) All of the best self help books defy logic.

Me: Who moved my cheese? Have you ever read who moved my cheese? It’s all about the metaphor of dealing with new situations in life and it’s like about…you’re these lab rats in this maze and you’re used to getting your cheese from a certain place and then one day you show up to the spot and there’s no cheese there and you’re like Who moved my cheese?? So that’s the whole thing and there’s all these rules like you can’t sit and wait for the old cheese to come back or whatever forever. You’re eventually going to have to find a new place to get some cheese. So it’s better to look for new cheese somewhere else then just, like, wait there and starve. All this weird stuff but…

Her: God, I feel so inspired right now!

Me: It’s like business metaphor, like self help, like business success manuals and stuff that kind of shit. The richest man in Babylon, y’know.

Her: The richest man in Babylon.

Me: Or, like, rich dad, poor dad, on PBS.

Her: Is that a show?

Me: It’s like this guy and he talks to you about what the rich dad would do and the poor dad does and money-management tips.

Her: You look like you’re dancing when you talk! You’re, like, gyrating around…

Me: This is to suggest that like, there’s more stuff going on in what I’m saying than what’s actually…

Her: So your tremors are, like, extra information from the great beyond?!

Me: Yeah, it’s like, you know, what poor dads would do, it’s jujst to suggest additional stuff going on. It’s like shorthard for me going “he’s going on a chalkboard” or whatever he’s doing, he’s talking to you about it, he’s waving his hands around, cause that’s what you do when you’re one of those animated motivational speakers. “I’m going to show you how to turn $200 into three new houses for your second generation’s family.” Or whatever, and you’re like “What is he…?” And he’s just like “Starts from within! No more red meat!”

Her: Good Lord, all day.

Both: (musical breakdown, beating on floor, singing bleacher songs from sports games)

Me: Yeah that part’s dope… Do you write like a bleacher song so you make millions off of the licensing deals when it’s a hit and they use it for sports things?

Her: No, I think you’re just trying promote your funky teeth. And so you try to pick all the words in which your teeth will be bared to the bleachers. And coincidentally, you can bleach your teeth.

Me: You eventually do bleach your teeth.

Her: He eventually bleached his teeth and that’s why he died, really.

Me: I know.

Her: No, he swallowed bleach trying to whiten his teeth.

Me: Oh god! …Bleachers.

Her: No, that’s not true.

Me: You just made that up. You’re confusing me.

Her: I’m Confucius.

Me: Man who fight with wife before bed get not peace (piece).

Her: Get no piece! Peace as in both words.

Me: Yeah, it’s like the stereotypical Confucian wisdom joke.

Her: Oh is it? You didn’t make that up?

Me: They’re always a double entendre about some kind of sexually explicit act being performed on Confucius…or something.

Her: Do you think, uh…

Me: No…

Her: Do you think when white trash weird folk hillbillies, aside from those who don’t know the word entendre, do you think they say “En-tender?”

Me: Entender??

Her: That’s like a double entender! That’s like Nintendo 3! It’s like when Mario comes…

Me: No, that’s Mario Cars. That’s a double entender.

Her: I didn’t intend it! I can’t pretend it.

Me: Unintentional entendre.

Her: Ah, that’s the name of my band…we’re the Intentional Entendres.

Me: Hahahaha, it’s art rock.

Her: Yo, listen, so I tried to cross the main plaza on UNM today and it was all blocked off by these caution ropes and all the police were walking around I was like ‘Oh my god, what’s going on?” and this guy was like ‘Oh, there’s this suspicious package”. It was the bomb squad. And I was like “Oh, my GOD, I can’t believe this. It’s probably a box of cookies.” And he, this… student, looked at me as if…I was totally NOT taking this seriously enough. God, I was like ‘ you fucking schmuck.’

Me: Haha, he was like “that’s really disrespectful. You hurt my feelings!”

Her: And then this girl said “It’s an art bomb! I think it’s a sculpture that an art student forgot to tell them they put their sculpture there. Art bomb!:

Me: I made this sculpture called the Info Bomb, but it was like, you know those real estate signs that have the plastic tubes with the red pencaps…

(leaves room for awhile, indecipherable)

So I stole one of those tubes and I took it off of a real estate sign and I took it back to the dirty punk house I was living at, that Coal Place kind of reminds me of. The place was called the Ministry of Information. While we were there, I had the info tube cause that’s what it said on the side of it. What I’d like to do is I would go into the disgusting carpet and I would pick up little rocks and little bits of garbage and little pieces of hair and pop tabs from beer and O.C.D, like, make little piles of it and I started putting all the piles in the tube and then my glasses broke and I shoved those in there and people would get into it and put random bits of garbage in there and it was really disgusting inside the info tube, it was all this weird mold and stuff growing in there, I don’t know. But eventually, I was carrying around, when I left town, I had this old typewriter, we destroyed this typewriter, we shoved all the old keys into it and smashed up the frame and then took all the wiring and stuff from it and took the mount for the paper jam spinning thing and all the metal and stuff and put the info tube on it, and it was full of all these old typewriter keys and garbage from the floor and then I wrapped all the wiring around it and…from the thing, and then I was going to California to go to this festival from Minneapolis on a Greyhound bus and I wrapped it in a towel and put it in this kind of tarp kind of thing that I had sort of tied to the bottom of my backpack cause I was trying to carry all this stuff with me.

Her: Wow! So you had, like, this weird conceptual metal tail?!

Me: Kind of, yeah. And when they searched all my stuff on the Greyhound bus, I showed it to them and I was like, well, it’s a sculpture, and they were like “Well, it’s kind of like a bomb!”

Her: Like a BOMB!?!?! (Laughing)

Me: And I was like “Well, I’m going to this art festival.” And I was trying to explain about how it represented like the planned obsolescence of technology, just making up all this stuff. But they let me take it there and I nailed it to a wall in a little town that the festival takes place at. And when we left I didn’t bother to take it down or anything, I just made a little placard with my post office box on it, and I was like “$50” but that post office box didn’t even work, but I don’t know, maybe somebody bought it.

Her: …probably not, they probably took it. Or left it there.

Me: Or threw it away.

Her: Or they were like “Jesus, that’s probably a bomb” and they ran away.

Me: Yeah, I had a lot of weird stuff with me. I carried around a lot of crap. I want to pair it down to…. Minimalism is so cool, y’know.

Her: It sounded like you were saying parrot down, like Black Hawk Down, like…

Me: I wanna parrot down like black hawk down

Her: I wanna black bear it down pillow….like, oh what is in this pillow? It’s so soft. And you can be like ‘Oh, that’s black parrot feather down.”

Me: That’s black parrot down pillow feather

Her: Down

Me: But it’s really kind of extraneous, I’m trying to pair it down to the bare essential.

Her: Oooh, to the naked essentials. To the naked bear’s essentials. What are the essentials of a naked bear?

Me: I was talking to AG..….do you know A.G.? She’s like this weird little raver girl

Her: Is she the one with the white dreadlocks?

Me: No. But I was telling her, can I call you Threadbare? And she was like Fred Bear? No! Theadbare! No, like bare into the threads. And she was like “Sure, but I have to come up with a name for you but I can’t think of anything right now.” And I was like well, call me back when you fuckin come up with something! And I don’t know what I thought Threadbare was a good-sounding phrase.

Her: It’s not, really.

Me: It’s not good?

Her: I mean, it doesn’t have that flow. Maybe it will after I hear it for awhile, maybe it’s something that catches on, like it’s an acquired name.

Me: You never know.

Her: I don’t, obviously, know anything.

Me: Oh God. That’s a good position to take.

Her: I…am an Idiot. That’s a great position to… No, there’s a difference between being an idiot and not knowing anything, right?

Me: You can be smart and not know anything.

Her: Really?

Me: Sure.

Her: Well, that’s what I was saying.

Me: Idiots can know a lot of stuff.

Her: Yeah, I know some people like that.

Me: Contrary to popular belief. I don’t know, it all depends on what you’re gaging, what your standard of measurement is for intelligence or whatever. Whatever paradigm or whatever crap you’re looking at. I believe every individual is uniquely suited to do something really well. To excel in something.

Her: Yeah, like the Giver? That book the Giver.

Me: I never read that.

Her: That’s a shame. That’s a damn shame, and you should read it tomorrow.

Me: I’ll understand my weird high school girlfriend better if I read that book. She had this whole complex about it.

Her: Oh, she was probably awesome.

Me: Mm-hmm. She was so awesome and I was so fuckin dweeby and lame. It was just really bad. It was one of those “open relationships” that are one-sided.

Her: Like, she was open?

Me: No, like I was open the whole time. I didn’t really know that I wanted to be in open relationships in the first place, so I just lied to her about it the whole time, but then she would always find out about it anyway.

Her: And she still loved you.

Me: Yeah, and it was really bad. We would get into these weird fights with each other and do drugs together and have bad trips and stuff and all this weird shit. I’ve got all these amazing great stories from all these experiences from that that I tell people. I don’t write about that stuff, I just talk. Cause I don’t want to divulge anything personal about myself for some reason.

Her: No divulging. Cause, if you’ve got too much divulging, it’s bulging. Like, took at that divulge bulge.

Me: Well, I think about kind of like how a person is almost defined more by what you don’t know about them then what you do know about them.

Her: I don’t know what that means. What does that mean?

Me: It’s like if you’re a magician or something, your power is that the person doesn’t know how you do the trick. It’s a secret. SO it’s kind of like as a performer or as an artist, it’s like the source of what you have is like the strength in it and if you divulge too much of it then you’re doing yourself a disservice.

Her: Oooh, and you become this formula from what you do?

Me: I don’t know, I haven’t gotten a lot of perspectives on this opinion of mine.

Her: You should go around with a clipboard, like, so I have this idea, tell me what you think! And you can have a little check box with, like, agree…

Me: …happy face, middle face…

Her: …confused face, vomit face…

Me: No, but it’s just like a scale of happy face to sad face, circle which one this one makes you feel. And it’s like, Sad Face…oh god! I get a bunch of sad faces. Yeah! That’s dope. No, I need to like get together focus groups…

Her: Listen to my idea! Please listen to my idea! I think it’s great.

Me: OK.

Her: You know how Lucy Van Pelt from Peanuts had that Doctor is In thing and Charlie Brown would come over and weep into her…

Me: This freeMe street psychologist or whatever…

Her: Yeah! But listen, I was thinking it would be cool to set up in a crowded area this set like that but it’s called Advice or something and people would come up and write, there’d be a paper with, like the President, Old People, category, Drug Addicts, students, whatever and people would write advice for these different genres of people, yeah? And then you have some thing and you put it all up and show stuff, and you can have some shitty snapshot and put it by them, I don’t know, but it’s all local, and you know these people, it’s such a small town, I mean it’s big but everyone knows each other anyway, it’s bizarre, it’s that paradox, but it wouldn’t have to be advice, it could be surreal experiences, it could be anything.

Me: So you’d just gather opinions about various genres of characters of people

Her: No, For them, FOR them, advice FOR them, it makes people think of people outside themselves, like what are these people like and what do I have to offer them?

Me: Can we be the specialists administering the….

Her: Oh, we’re TOTALLY specialists.

Me: And can we be in doctor costumes

Her: Yeah, goggles??

Me: And I want to have a nametag or something that says Dr. Fraud

Her: HAHAHAHA! Instead of Dr. Freud!!

Me: And we have another one that’s Dr. Con.

Her: Like conning….

Me: And then we could have another one that’s called Dr. Awkward cause it…

Her: …sounds cool

Me: …is a palindrome

Her: …No it’s not.

Me: Yeah, D R awkward is a palindrome.

Her: Oh! That’s really, really cool.

Me: Yeah, this guy N. told me that once. A guy named N. that I know, he was a professional clown. He did this whole routine where he had this woman with him ahnd they traveled around Europe and he’d perform on the streets and he’d be in this hobo clown outfit throwing around oversized dollar bills and his tie would turn into a sledge hammer and he’d lay on a bed of spikes and the girl with him would break a cinderblock over his chest…

Her: Jesus

Me: Yeah, he’s way cool. He’s some crazy San Francisco dude or something. And he had this thing on his, one of his pictures on a Web page, one of those social profile things, it was a picture of him with a light saber and under him it said Metaphors Be With You.

Her: Um….so why does he have to hate on the similes?

Me: Cause it sounds like May the force be with you, like form Star Wars.

Her: Met-a-phors be…

Me: Metaphors be with you.

Her: ……Metaphors be with you!! OH MY GOD!!! WHAT A GENIUS! I LOVE HIM!
Jesus, do you think he made that up?

Me: I don’t know, maybe. But I’m going to propagate it because it’s so cool . I almost said steal it but I changed it to propagate.

Her: Propagate on , brother.

Me: But stealing is fun too. I mean, they say site you sources or whatever but…

Her: I say STEAL your sources

Me: Steal you sources! And then laugh about it later.

Her: I say ignite your sources.

Me: Yeah, ignite your sources.

Her: I say spread an inferno, a town-wide source inferno. ….Jesus…, it’s almost 4 in the morning.

Me: Uh-oh.

Her: What?

Me: Four in the morning.

Her: Do you know what happens at four?

Me: You turn into a werewolf?

Her: I mean, have you heard the stories? They’re terrifying. I don’t even remember them, cause I lose my mind.

Me: We never remember whatever happens at four in the morning! Oh God. It’s like one of those horror movies where everybody blanks out in these weird psychotic states they don’t remember and then they wake up and there’s all these dead bodies everywhere or whatever and they’re like “What happened?” and then it’s like the whole movie takes place within a flashback of a flashback.

Her: Yeah, and it’s also like what happens at 4 a.m. stays at 4 a.m.

Me: Oh god, like Vegas?

Her: Like it.

Me: (singing) Vegas will make us or break us

(Fridge begins to hum)

Me: (strokes fridge)Good machine, excellent

Her: Haha, he’s humming along to your song

Me: Do you want to be a technologist? Oh yeah! Oh Holy Stopwright! Thank you for granting me access!

Her: I’d like to thank… I’d like to thank, the U.S. Army for this line, this fat line that I’m about to do on the light bulb.

Me: Oh yeah! Where did that come from? What were we talking about?

Her: Something about you sleeping in. No, no, no, I was like if you were a soldier of the U.S. army, you would have been up 5 hours ago, it was, like, 11 o’ clock. We were talking about how they made it possible that you could sleep in.

Me: Oh yeah! Then I was like, I gotta thank those guys for defending my freedom to let me sleep in!

Her: Yeah, that’s exactly what you said!

Me: And then I woke up and was all like “Yeah, every time I do a fat line I’m going to be like ‘Thanks a lot U.S. Army!’”

Her: (Laughing with tears in eyes)

Me: Cause they come back and they’re all like “I didn’t serve in ‘Nam so you damn hippie kids could fuck each other and snort lines off of lightbulbs asses!!” and whatever.

Her: (still laughing)

Me: That’s what they say. You go to the protest or whatever and the veteran guys are there and they’re like Well, when I was your age, and I’m like We’re living in the 50’s now and, you know, Tokyo is about to explode!

…….

Me: I mean, their consumer product cycle is three times as fast as ours or something. They have like new models of stuff all the time. It’s INSANE!

Her: You’re insane.

Me: Yes. I got the Internet when I was, like, 14 years old or something.

Her: Oh yeah, and then you read about the anarchist cookbook and making bombs and shit. You did, didn’t you? You memorized the anarchist cookbook. Remember the one about like burning the toothbrush to get change out of the phone machines? You burn the bristles and put it in there and it like forms and molds and…

Me: Oh cool. And then you can , like, …I watched B. do this thing where he just opens up a whole newspaper box, he just walks up to those things and he’s just like KHOOM! and grabs, like, ten newspapers and he’s just like “Here, it’s Sunday, here’s the classifieds, go get a job!” That’s what he said to me.

Her: I love his accent.

Me: He has this whole routine, he’s always like, Why don’t you chill out for a while and stay in Albuquerque and get a job? Work a shitty job for a couple months then save up some money THEN travel around.

Her: Jesus, you do that so well! You sound just like him!

Me: No I don’t.

Her: Jesus, yes you do. That’s crazy.

Me: Yeah, you get really good at mimicry when you start practicing the whole way of becoming fast friends with people and adapting to your environemt. It’s a survival mechanism, you have to adapt to your environment.

Her: Do I have an imitatable voice?

Me: (Imitating) Do I have an imitatable voice? I mean, everybody has an imitatable voice.

Her: Try more. Just go on a rant about painting.

Me: Ok, painting…

Her: About how everybody today sucks…

Me: No, I can’t, it’s too contrived…

Her: OK, go on a rant about salamanders. Go. You’re on the spot.

Me: YOU go on a rant about some random topic. You probably could, you’re good at stuff. I don’t claim to be good at being randomy randable randabalot randall brot set like the fractal Warshack Test.

Her: I was just thinking that.

Me: The Warshack Test?

Her: No, the whole thing. That whole messy R slur.

Me: Really?

Her: Yeah. I’ve been there brother. I’ve been there and I almost never came back.

Me: Yeah, we go around and write this weird poetry and sometimes you get this one long really good drugged out rant or something and then you go out and read it at open mics and stuff and weird literary dudes are like No, I relate, I was there on every one of those lines and you’re just like that’s crazy cause I was all fucked up…

…..

Me: They’re inextricably intertangled.

Her: Drug culture and sub culture? That’s cause you gotta keep drugs on the down low so you gotta keep the culture on the downlow.

Me: Or is just that every culture has it’s drugs or something?

Her: Yeah, well, I mean, high class they use coke, they just don’t talk about it. That’s the rich kids….

Me: The sanctioned drugs of the official culture.

Her: Yeah, like beer.

Me: So you would say there’s the national drug and the state drug, it’s like that isn’t it?

Her: Yeah, I like that.

Me: Yeah, the state flower is, like, the hummingbird and the state drug is Zoloft or whatever.

Her: HAHAHA! The state flower is the hummingbird?? HAHAHAHA! Can the state French fry sauce be shoe polish?

Me: I guess. There’s a lot of weird things that you could do with shoe polish.

Her: You can use it as a lubricant when you’re raping a shoe!! (laughing)

Me: Yeah, OH YEAH, You’re like size 4!

Her: What did shoe do today?

Me: I went home.

Her: I raped a size 4 Oxford.

Me: Oh God. That’s what shoe salesmen do when no ones looking.

Her: Oh yeah, that’s why they’re so shiny!

Me: The shoe salesmen?

Her: HAHA NO, the SHOES!

Me: Oh OK.

Her: No, everything, it’s like a really shiny store, they come out and wax it with everything, it’s sparkling glass, the people the shoes , the floor, the office phone keeps ringing and nobody picks it up. Why do they do that? Jesus!

Me: They’re like I don’t get paid to answer the phone. It’s that bitch’s job!

Her: Even the boss says that.

Me: Yeah, he’s like I’m not getting paid to be here! Why are we here? It’s a volunteer store, a volunteer shoe store. I don’t get paid to answer the phones or sell used shoes. You buy your own shoes; just leave some money over there. That would be cool. What about, you know how they have free stores? Have you ever heard of the free store?

Her: No, no, no, no I haven’t.

Me: It’s like a store where it looks like a astore but everythin’s free.

Her: So people just drop off shit there?

Me: Yeah, and then they put it out..

Her: That’s amazing.

Me: Yeah, it’s like for homeless people and stuff. They had this great showspace that was in the back of this punk bike co-op place and it was down the street from, like, a cop shop…

Her: Wait, can I shape your beard with clippers?

Me: Oh God, Shave it?

Her: No, shape it.

Me: Oh, shape it.

Her: We’ll shave part of it.

Me: Yeah.

Her: Really?

Me: Yeah. What are you going to do, make it look diabolical or something?

Her: Can I have free creative reign on your beard?

Me: Oh god.

Her: No, I’m not going to make you look stupid, it’ll hardly change.

Me: Ok, fine.